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The NHS70 Parliamentary Awards are designed to celebrate the work of all NHS staff and those who work alongside them to improve and join up care in their communities.

We are looking for outstanding nominees who have innovated, impressed and made a real difference to how the health and care system provides care for patients. Nominees could be an individual, a team, or an entire organisation.

They don’t have to be working within the NHS – these awards are for anyone working for or with the NHS towards the shared goal of delivering health and high quality care, now and for future generations.

Neither do they have to be in frontline or clinical roles – around 60% of the NHS workforce perform vital but often-unseen roles ensuring that the NHS is there to meet the needs of patients, and many more people support patients in other ways, such as via their local Healthwatch, social enterprises or charities.

The Excellence in Mental Health Care Award

The Five Year Forward View for Mental Health sets out a roadmap to increase investment in mental health and expand and improve our mental health services. This plan is being delivered across England and the increase in investment is providing: new eating disorder services for children and young people across England; specialist perinatal mental health services that weren’t in place before; acute liaison services 24/7 in half of all hospitals; and the largest talking therapy service in the world.

But this transformation of services would not be possible without the people who are making it happen. This award intends to highlight those individuals or teams who are the forefront of developing improvements in the support available to those with or at risk of mental ill health and showcase the steps taken to safeguard mental wellbeing.

This could be through:

developing new and effective kinds of services for those experiencing or at risk of crisis;

working with local partners to put in place effective prevention strategies that promote better mental health, or;

working with their communities to address stigma and help design services for those who are hardest to reach, reducing health inequalities.

The Excellence in Cancer Care Award

More than one in three of us will get cancer in our lifetimes, but thanks to NHS staff pioneering better prevention, earlier diagnosis and innovative new treatments, we are also seeing the highest cancer survival rates ever – an estimated 7,000 more people are surviving cancer after successful NHS cancer treatment compared to three years ago. The National Cancer Patient experience survey confirms the vast majority of people with cancer are really positive about the NHS care they receive.

The aim of the Excellence in Cancer Care award is to highlight individuals or teams that are going above and beyond to improve treatment and outcomes for patients, as well as those who are supporting patients with the personalised care and support they need, when they need it, to live a happy and healthy life beyond a diagnosis of cancer.

This could be through:

working with community groups to increase awareness and uptake of cancer checks amongst the hardest to reach groups, and thereby reducing long-standing inequalities;

developing new services which help patients deal with the physical and psychological side-effects of diagnosis and treatment, or;

forging links with other teams and healthcare professionals to help ensure people get ongoing support.

The Excellence in Urgent and Emergency Care Award

We all want to know that the NHS will be there for us and our families when we need it the most - to provide urgent and emergency care 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Staff are working with great skill and dedication to do so, and looking after more patients than ever - each year the NHS provides around 110million urgent same-day patient contacts, yet in providing nine out of ten patients with A&E care within four hours, the UK offers our patients the fastest national A&E treatment of any major industrialised country.

This award seeks to celebrate the amazing work of our emergency care services across the country – whether that’s A&E doctors and nurses, Ambulance Service paramedics and technicians, out-of-hours GPs or the 999 and 111 teams who take calls from worried members of the public – and we are looking specifically for nominees who have made improvements to how the NHS treats people who need urgent care in their areas.

This could be through:

developing new protocols, including working with other agencies and/or volunteers to improve response times or increase capacity in A&E;

increasing the effectiveness of care, or;

putting in place different services which are more convenient for people needing urgent treatment.

The Excellence in Primary Care Award

Primary care services provide the first point of contact in the healthcare system, acting as the ‘front door’ of the NHS for the public. GPs in particular have one of the highest public satisfaction ratings of any public service, at over 85%, and provide over 300 million patient consultations each year, but many more patients also rely on community pharmacy, dental, and optometry services for initial and ongoing support.

As the needs of patients and the wider NHS evolves, so is the role of primary care, and this award seeks to recognise primary care practitioners and teams that are working with patients to help them stay healthy and avoid long stays in hospital or being admitted in the first place.

This could be through:

bringing in different kinds of professionals and/or working with the voluntary and community groups to broaden the range of services in their local practice;

working closely with colleagues in hospitals, community teams and the third sector to plan patient care better, or;

joining together with other practises to jointly deliver more convenient appointments for patients.

The Person-Centred Care Champion Award

The way that the NHS in England has historically worked has sometimes been too focussed on organisations and not on the needs of patients, meaning that people get passed from pillar to post, attending multiple hospital appointments and repeating their stories to different professionals, and don’t get the kind of joined up care we would all want.

This award seeks to highlight the individuals, teams or organisations which are going the furthest towards breaking down barriers between different services to ensure patients with long-term and multiple needs get the right care in the right place for them.

This could be through:

pulling together different professionals into one team to plan complete packages of care for individual patients;

engaging with the public, charities and patient groups to deliver community services which better meet their needs, or;

jointly planning services across an area which are focussed on preventing ill health – particularly amongst those groups who suffer poorer outcomes – rather than on picking up the pieces afterwards.

The Future NHS Award

Many important healthcare technologies - from vaccines to MRI scanners - have been nurtured by our strong science base and universities, innovative culture and leading healthcare system.

This award seeks to highlight individuals, teams and organisations that are successfully embracing the opportunities that come from advances in medical technology, data and connectivity.

This could be through:

developing ways of using wearable devices and apps to monitor patients or support them to manage their own conditions;

harnessing technology to make their services more connected, efficient and effective, freeing up staff time and resources to improve patient care, or;

using data to provide analysis and evidence which helps professionals better target services to prevent ill health or the need for crisis care.

The Healthier Communities Award

Life expectancy continues to rise in England, but in recent years those rises have slowed. In the NHS Five Year Forward View, a clear commitment was made to dramatically improving population health – but this can only be achieved when local services of all kinds work together to identify and tackle the particular problems in the communities they serve.

This award seeks to highlight the work of those individuals, teams or organisations which have brought different services and community groups together to improve public health and reduce health inequalities in their areas.

putting in place innovative and wide-ranging programmes to tackle a specific issue such as smoking rates, child obesity or substance misuse, or;

creating effective marketing, communication or education campaigns which have made a measurable and sustained difference in behaviour.

The Care and Compassion Award

The very best experiences of the NHS do not come simply in being able to perform the latest cutting edge interventions, but from putting patients at the heart of care, engaging patients and families, listening to their views, and ensuring people are treated with care and compassion.

This award is for those individuals, teams and organisations who make it an over-riding priority to treat patients with kindness, dignity and respect as an equal partner in their own care.

This could be through:

changing how healthcare staff communicate with patients and their families;

driving improvements to care environments to make them dementia-friendly or generally more pleasant places for patients and their loved ones, or;

ensuring that patients and their families are well-informed and empowered to play an active role in deciding what type of care they receive.

The Patient and Public Involvement Award

The NHS has always been a physical part of local communities, but it is at its best when it invites the community in to play an active role in shaping services, overseeing its performance and helping it reach more people who need it.

This award looks to celebrate those members of the public who give up their time and lend their experiences to help shape and deliver better services for themselves and others in their area. We are looking for individuals or local groups, such as local Healthwatches or lay/patient representatives on NHS boards, who have worked hand in hand with local services to ensure they better meet the needs of those they serve.

This could be through:

providing critical but constructive feedback on performance;

augmenting the NHS’ ability to reach out to different communities, or;

fundraising for new or improved facilities or treatment options.

The Lifetime Achievement Award

The NHS is nothing without its million plus strong workforce, comprised of dedicated staff ranging from cleaners to porters, nurses to surgeons, volunteers to directors. In the NHS, perhaps more than in any other sector, going to work is about more than just earning a living – it’s a vocation.

This award seeks to honour those who have given their life to the NHS, and have left it – whether just in their area or nationally – a better service for patients and/or a better place to work for those who will follow them. We are looking for someone who has worked or volunteered within or in support of a health or care setting for 40 years or more, and who has left a lasting legacy.

This could be through:

championing diversity and inclusion at work and in how the NHS treats patients;

leading improvements in care or working conditions in challenging circumstances, or;